A child was encountered in the streets; provided that he was fifteen years of age and did not know where he was to sleep, he was sent to the galleys. Grand reign; grand century.
Under Louis XV.
children disappeared in Paris; the police carried them off, for what mysterious purpose no one knew. People whispered with terror monstrous conjectures as to the king's baths of purple.
Barbier speaks ingenuously of these things. It sometimes happened that the exempts of the guard, when they ran short of children, took those who had fathers.
The fathers, in despair, attacked the exempts.
In that case, the parliament intervened and had some one hung.
Who?
The exempts?
No, the fathers.
BOOK FIRST.--PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
CHAPTER VII
THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATIONS OF INDIA
The body of street Arabs in Paris almost constitutes a caste. One might almost say:
Not every one who wishes to belong to it can do so.
This word gamin was printed for the first time, and reached popular speech through the literary tongue, in 1834.
It is in a little work entitled Claude Gueux that this word made its appearance. The horror was lively.
The word passed into circulation.
The elements which constitute the consideration of the gamins for each other are very various.